Trump: Nvidia's most powerful AI chip Blackwell only for the USA

The most advanced AI chips from US semiconductor company Nvidia will remain exclusive to US companies and are not to be supplied to China and other countries. This was stated by US President Donald Trump in a television interview with the US television channel CBS, broadcast on Sunday.

“We will not make the most advanced chips available to anyone except the United States,” Trump said on CBS's “60 Minutes.” He was reiterating statements he had previously made to journalists aboard Air Force One. “The new Blackwell, which was introduced recently, is ten years ahead of any other chip, but no, we are not giving this chip to others,” he had explained during a flight over the weekend.

Less powerful chips for China

The US President's statements suggest, according to a report by the news agency Reuters, that the US government could impose stricter restrictions on cutting-edge US AI chips than previously assumed. These could then affect not only China. Just at the end of last week, Nvidia announced that it would supply more than 260,000 Blackwell AI chips to South Korea and some of the country's largest companies, including Samsung Electronics.

In the CBS interview, Trump did not rule out that China could acquire a less powerful version of Nvidia's Blackwell chip. “We will allow them to trade with Nvidia, but not in terms of the most advanced chips,” he said. According to Reuters, this has in turn drawn criticism from China hardliners in Washington. They fear that this could strengthen Beijing's military capabilities and accelerate China's development in artificial intelligence (AI).

According to media reports, the Chinese government, for its part, is preventing companies in the country from using stripped-down Nvidia chips. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, in turn, is trying to persuade the US government that a strong competitor to US chips could emerge in China if the market there remains closed to Nvidia. Furthermore, Huang stated, according to Reuters, that Nvidia needs access to the Chinese market to finance research and development in the US. Last week, Nvidia was valued as the first company at five trillion US dollars. Before his trip to Asia, Trump had indicated that he also wanted to discuss Nvidia's new Blackwell chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping but stated that the topic ultimately did not come up.

Action against China's technology sector

Even under President Joe Biden, the US government has imposed extensive export restrictions on particularly fast AI chips from US chip manufacturers like Nvidia to China. In the summer, Washington did grant initial approvals for the export of Nvidia's H20 accelerators to China; in return, there is a profit-sharing agreement for the US government. But the semiconductor sector in particular is under pressure due to Trump's tariff policy.

In July, US President Trump decreased regulatory hurdles for the development and export of AI by decree to maintain the US's lead over China in this area. At the same time, the United States is trying to cut China off from US technology in the AI race and, under Trump, is targeting China's technology sector. At the end of September, Washington expanded a blacklist of hundreds of Chinese companies.

(akn)